What Does Buzzfeed Have To Do With Marketing Our Music?

What's up gigging pros! It's Jared Judge. Welcome to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. I'm excited for this one, because I want to reveal to you another music marketing experiment that I have recently launched and successfully generated a booking lead. You guys know I love running these experiments, because I'm thinking about booking my act pretty much every day. You know, that's my main, one of my main goals in life, is to just continually book my act, and get as many gigs as possible. But not just any gigs, the high paying private event gigs that pay musicians a living wage. And I am always running experiments, which to me, that's the mindset that I would love to give to you is to realize that getting your ACT booked is a marketing problem. If you're not getting booked, you're just not marketing your act. And it is a solvable problem. If you're willing to have that mindset shift, and do the work necessary to learn how to market your act, and then implement it and get results. Which those results feel pretty awesome when I step on stage and get compensated fairly for what I do. So because I have that mindset, I'm constantly experimenting with my marketing. Because, you know, with any business, it is never just a one and done kind of thing. You know, Apple computers is always marketing their business, and trying new things, new commercials, new ways. They have the Apple Store setup. Why do they put the iPads at a certain angle, it's to get you to touch them, instead of just lying in a way that you could read the screen without touching it. So marketing is a constant thing. And instead of being pissed off at it, I've embraced it. I love it. And so I'll tell you about this new experiment that I'm running that generated a lead, and I haven't paid a dime for it. Which is nice, because then I don't have to pay those booking websites or booking agent to get me that lead. And so have you ever taken a quiz on Buzzfeed? Perhaps it was which Harry Potter house do you belong in? And it'll start you into Hufflepuff Ravenclaw, rivet slithering or Griffin door? Which for me, it was always Gryffindor or have you ever taken one of those quizzes about like, the foods you eat will tell you what generation you belong to. And that's where it gives you options like what do you eat for breakfast? You eat eggs, cereal? And then at the end of the quiz, it'll tell you Are you a baby boomer Gen Z? Millennial. And it's always surprising and scarily accurate, how these quizzes are? If you've ever taken one of those, which if you haven't, you know, I'm not sure if you've been on the internet. But if you have these quizzes are super fun, they are engaging, they are entertaining. And when you're thinking about people who want to book musicians, why do they want to book musicians, because they are entertaining. So why not entertain them before that you have the chance to play for them and entertain. And these quizzes are a fantastic way to do that. Plus, it's also a fantastic way to build up your authority, show these people that you are the live music experts and do that. And so I recently got certified by Clickfunnels. Some of you might know I'm in a Click Funnels certification program that I get certified in the different types of marketing funnels available to us. There are 14 core funnels, and then for additional certification. So eating total certification, I've got hen so far. And my goal is to get all 18 is I don't know I guess I'm a completionist. And so I completed the certification on survey funnels, which are the same as quiz funnels, and just how to use these quizzes to generate leads, which are a super effective strategy. Especially considering I put it on my website like yesterday already generated a lead from it. So I created this quiz. It is the like, ceremony is the winning quiz, wedding ceremony and cocktail hour playlist quiz. And I pitched it as a fun little quiz. answer a couple of fun questions about you and your fiance and I will generate for you a perfect playlist for your wedding ceremony and cocktail hour. And this quiz is related to the service that I'm offering. And that is very important. Don't, don't just do a like Harry Potter sorting hat quiz, especially if you're trying to sell music because it's completely unrelated. We want to demonstrate expertise in the area that that we are trying to get them to buy it. So this quiz asked a bunch of questions. I had gotten this idea from a DJ marketing company like years ago. And it realized I had actually created a quiz. Like I wasn't connecting it to my service at the point. But I had put this quiz out there, and I ran Facebook ads to it. And back, this was back in 2020, December 2020, South seven, eight months after COVID. And then I ran this quiz and I generated 243 leads from it, which was crazy, especially considering we were still in the middle of a pandemic, and people were interested in generating. At that time I was it was a first dance song quiz, it was going to ask them a couple of questions generate the bride and groom's first dance song and generate 243 leads, which was insane. But the problem was, I was running the ads from BookLive's account. And BookLive is not the company that was providing music services. BookLive is the software that other music services use to write contracts, schedule, musicians build setlist, give the clients a client portal to pick their songs, that kind of And so it was almost pointless for me to run this first dance quiz from BookLive. Because it was not connected to a musical act that could actually fulfill on those promises. You know, at that time, I was only running Dream City Strings, a string quartet. thing. And we didn't play wedding receptions. So we had no way of actually playing their first dances. You know, most people just hired the string quartet for the ceremony, and the cocktail hour, maybe dinner. But then they used a band or DJ for the reception to play the first dance. So that's why I had gotten this idea. And I was like, Hey, I'm getting certified in this, let me pull that quiz out. Let me redo it, for the services that actually do provide. And this time I did it on Extreme Strings, which is electric violin, still in the wedding ceremony and cocktail hour realm. And so changing up the questions, one of the questions on the quiz. And by the way, you should definitely take this quiz. I don't mind if you take it and you'll see what I do on the back end to turn these leads into bookings. And ask them like, you and your fiance are on a road trip, what kind of music are you listening to you? Is a multiple choice like 80s Music top 40s indie folk. And then it asks them for, you know, what are your must play songs, what do you do not play songs. And then the most important part is that it asks for their email address to get the playlist that we will create for them. That is how the lead is generated. You know, I want to hammer this home so much. And that's This podcast is really all about marketing your music. But the point of marketing, really, there are two things. In the end, especially the style of marketing that I've learned in that I teach because it's so effective is to generate leads, that is point number one, you got to get people's contact information, otherwise you have no way of booking them. So point one is generate leads. Point two is generate a sale. A sale is a booking of your act, when somebody is exchanging money for your services, you have created a sale. And so this quiz is all about generating leads. So in the quiz itself, in order to get your results, but your email address here, no email address no results. So that's why they're forced to become a lead. And of course, not everybody will put in their email address because some people just don't want to give it but that's okay. Because there will be people that do. And from what I've discovered, it is a majority of people who take the quiz put in their email address because they they feel like they've invested so much into the answers. And they're in momentum that's putting in their email addresses just the final logical step. So quiz, this is a survey funnel, quick survey funnels are very effective. And then the that generates the lead. So I get these new leads in my database, my email database. And then the second goal of marketing is to generate a sale, which that is when the follow up happens. So I promised these people a customized wedding ceremony and cocktail hour playlist. And that is exactly what I give them. But you might be thinking if you've generated over 243 leads from this does that mean you're creating 243 completely unique, individualized custom ceremony and cocktail are playlists. The answer is yes. But not my hand. So, I've chatted a couple times about ChatGPT. And it is amazing. I've been using it for so many things. But I've been very particular about how I use it. Because I've seen if there was a podcast episode about proofread your emails, that kind of thing where I expose the dangers of just blindly trusting whatever chatGPT gives you, because it definitely reads like aI if you don't use it the right way. And so what I've done for this quiz, is I created a very Custom Prompt, it is, I'd say it's like three or four paragraphs long, it's a very long prompt. You know, many people in the US Chachi btw, they just type one sentence asking for it what to do. And that's why they get very generic responses. My prompt is like four paragraphs, it's basically an essay. And it tells ChatGPT the context, and I just received this quiz response. And I promised people to create a custom wedding ceremony, playlist, ceremony, cocktail or playlist. By the way, this is some information about my act. And here are the quiz responses, generate an email for me, that includes a custom playlist, and respect their wishes, you know, match the vibe that they said on their road trip playlist. And then when I run that prompts, boom, it spits out an email. It greets them the way I asked it, to greet them in the first paragraph, kind of warms them up a little bit, treats them like a friend. And then without further ado, it presents the playlist generated. And then at the end, I have it pitch my services and offer a free music consultation via zoom. And that is where I generate the sale. And then of course, if they don't schedule their consultation immediately, then I've got an automated email follow up sequence that basically encourages them to do that. Either until they book the consultation, or they unsubscribe. So Isn't that insane? It's pretty cool. Have you thought of doing something like that for your act? Many musicians don't. Mainly because you're not focused on marketing the act. But like I said, Before, I think about it every single day. I'm always running new experiments. And that's the reason why I'm very effective at it. That's the reason why not many year into my experience of living in a new city. And my act has already books, over five figures in the New City. Just pretty insane. If you think about it, most people can't just like show up to a new city and create a five figure a year job for themselves. Man, I'm very proud about that. I'm trying not to be too braggy about it. But it is something that excites me a lot. And it's because of marketing. I blame it all on market. Blame in a good way, of course. So that's a quiz funnel, check it out, go to my x website, go to ExtremeStrings.com, you will see a little ad for it on our homepage. And then take the quiz, see the response that you get, I would love for you all to experience it and start to implement some of this on your site. It's really that important that you do this. Because otherwise, you're just focusing on the music, just focusing on creating the product of music, then you fail to deliver it to people, people will never find out about it. And then you have no chance of making money at it. People won't just discover you, you have to be constantly marketing. So that's my quiz funnel. And I will be testing it out for for other types of people to you know, there could be a corporate events quiz, a birthday party quiz, and maybe even a funeral quiz. That would be kind of, you know, morbid humor there. But yeah, my next step, actually, is to run Facebook ad traffic at it, because I generated the leads from it so far without paying anything. And I have been helping my students that full time Academy, create these quizzes and run some Facebook ads at it. And they've been generating leads through Facebook ads, which is awesome. But again, that's not for everybody. It's really once you've established a good foundation for your act, and have tapped into human resources like the Gig Vault, and built up your partnerships with the private event venues and planners. And by the way, I know this podcast is getting pretty long. But even like this quiz funnel, works really well with the partnership strategy. So if you partner with a private event venue, and they put a link to your website, on their website, which that's the whole goal of the gig wall is to help you do that. And then when your web is on the venue's website, somebody who just booked that venue for their event. They're looking for music options. They see, oh, this Extreme Strings Electric Violin sounds interesting. I'm gonna go check out their website. So they click from your partner's website to yours. They're not quite ready to make an inquiry, like they don't want to price and availability yet because they're not sold on you. But they get on your website. And they see oh, wow, I can take a fun music quiz. I love taking quizzes, and then they take the quiz. And boom, you get a lead from them earlier than possible, because they weren't ready for pricing availability. Like they were ready for a quote. Yet they were ready for a quiz. So that's how you get leads to you before you're actually supposed to get them. Selling is pretty cool. And speaking of Gig Vaults, you've heard me talk about it a couple of times if you haven't gotten it yet, why have you not gotten it? Do you hate gigs? If you don't hate gigs, which I know you don't because you're listening to the musician, The Gigging Musician Podcast that go get a free copy of this. You know, I literally spent 1000s of dollars on my assistants putting together this gigantic list of venues and event planners in the United States, who you can partner with, get a link to your website on their website, and boom, that's it. So great, your free copy of the Gig Vault at OpenTheGigVault.com And I can't wait to share this strategy with you and help you implement it so you can get as many high paying gigs as you want. Alright, thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember,"Your music will not market itself!".